Soon the Drift of Dusk – Darrell Coggins

 

Twirls of seaweed strew

over dimpled rocks

 

quickly shed free –

across damp sand

playing off each other

 

papery filaments skitter

and flip

 

Later, washed over

crisscrossed in a half-smile

frail footsteps recede

 

disquieting behind me

ribbed with graveyard bones

limestone fragments crumble

 

wallpapered underneath

in imprecise lines

 

snippets of ochre conjure

an amoebic design

a patina stained and flecked

 

Soon the drift of dusk –

unmoored, about to weep

drawn back and back

 

both beautiful and hypnotic

a bevy of clouds merge

towards the sea

 

continuously glassy

minute waves lap

almost silent –

 

gentle against my feet

 

 

Darrell Coggins is a poet, visual artist and musician who lives in Adelaide, South Australia. His poetry has been published in Poetry Matters, Positive Words, The Mozzie, Tamba, Studio, Nine Muses, Envy – Seven Deadly Sins, The Crow and Friendly Street Poets anthologies. Darrell’s poems are of moments seen, heard and felt.

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July 12, 2020 by foxglovejournal Categories: Poetry, UncategorizedTags: Adelaide, Australia, beauty, clouds, creative, creativity, Darrell Coggins, drift, dusk, elements, fragments, movement, nature, poem, Poetry, rocks, sand, sea, senses, time, waves, world, writing Leave a comment

Riparian zone – John Grey

 

The bends, the lichen-coated rocks,

dissipate the current

so that it spreads out sideways

to the banks,

before continuing downstream.

 

Along the margin,

bees drift in and out

of purple harebell lobes,

bright white arrowhead,

patches of southern iris.

 

For a hundred miles,

a modest greenery

of riffle and grass,

muskrat hole and wildflower,

pilots the flow,

unhurried and content.

 

A selfless strip of life

conjoins these waters.

Without it,

the river draws no breath

 

 

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident. His work has recently been published in New Plains Review, Stillwater Review and Big Muddy Review, and is upcoming in Louisiana Review, Columbia College Literary Review and Spoon River Poetry Review.

October 31, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: Australia, bees, breath, colours, content, creative, creativity, current, drift, flow, flowers, John Grey, lichen, life, margin, nature, poem, Poetry, river, rocks, US, water, writing Leave a comment

The River – Jade Cuttle

 

Oblinsky Plateau, Siberia

 

The mist above the river hangs in hesitation

like the tingle of flies, time bending slowly

in on itself like the spill of the sun as it turns

 

a blind eye to the chaotic curl of the current,

shoving its swell through the morning rush

of rocks shifting restless beneath the surface:

 

this river is ready to be ripped from its bed,

stripped of its sheets, dragged by the drift,

its stitches of silt worked loose by the tide

 

before it can rise, like a splinter of sunlight 

whose split is slight then all of a sudden

has swallowed the sky.

 

Jade Cuttle read literature at University of Cambridge. She has performed on BBC Radio 3 in association with BBC Proms (The Art of Splinters) and is broadcast regularly across BBC Introducing. She has been commissioned for BBC podcasts celebrating Shakespeare’s 400th anniversary and won competitions run by Ledbury Poetry Festival, Foyle Young Poets, BBC Proms, and the Poetry Book Society. She is currently working as Daljit Nagra’s Apprentice Poet-In-Residence at Ilkley Literature Festival and is looking to publish her first pamphlet. If you enjoy her work, you are warmly invited to follow here: www.facebook.com/jadecuttle.

June 25, 2017June 25, 2017 by foxglovejournal Categories: PoetryTags: bed, chaos, creative, creativity, drift, elements, hesitation, Jade Cuttle, mist, nature, poem, Poetry, river, rocks, rush, silt, sky, sun, surface, tide, time, water, writing Leave a comment